As is known cloud computing infrastructure systems contain a varied collection of servers (“hosts”), storage systems (“storage arrays”), networking devices, software modules and other components. Sets of hosts, networking devices, and storage arrays assembled in close proximity make up a unit of cloud infrastructure. These components are physically connected via Ethernet networks.
The logical configuration of these components and networks creates platforms that are sold or leased as services from a menu of predefined configuration offerings (“service offerings”) for consumers of cloud computing. The instantiation of such an offering is considered an “infrastructure service”. Defining services in this manner enables the consumer to use a selected portion of the host and storage resources within a given cloud infrastructure.
When configuring a computer system (“host”) to communicate with a storage array (“array”) across a fabric using the Fibre Channel protocol, it is common to configure ‘zones’ as a security measure to control which hosts are able to communicate with which arrays. The key in zoning are VSANs. VSANs combined with hardware-enforced zoning provide the SAN designer with new tools to highly optimize SAN deployments in terms of scalability, availability, security and management. VSANs provide the ability to create completely isolated fabric topologies, each with its own set of fabric services, on top of a scalable common physical infrastructure. As each VSAN possesses its own zoning service, zoning is then configured within each VSAN independently and has no affect on any other VSAN and zoning service.
Sets of hosts, networking devices, and storage arrays assembled in close proximity make up a unit of cloud infrastructure sometimes referred to as a pod (“pod”) of devices. The pod components are physically connected via Ethernet networks.